Not a Hero, Not a Villain

Chapter 2: The Ring of a Bell

Chapter 2: The Ring of a Bell

    I had only glanced at the man for a few seconds, but by the time those few seconds were over, he had managed to cover half of the football field. I blinked and checked again, but he was still running faster than any man should be able to. His strides were graceful, but they also brought up the memory of a documentary I saw about lions when they hunt. Then I turned to mention this to Kayla, but she was gone. Upon looking around the classroom I found that everyone else had gone out to investigate the explosion, despite the protesting of the teachers. 

    As I stepped out into the hall, I noticed how silent the school had become. This didn’t make me feel any better after seeing the strange man outside. I crept through the halls as silently as I could. The halls were cool and smelled musty even though there were students in them no less than five minutes before. This set my nerves on edge, and I froze in place as a chill ran down my back. The feeling of being watched washed over me and I whirled around to find a girl I didn’t recognize behind me. She was about 5’6” with long, blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. What made me uncomfortable about her though was the way she looked at me. It was like she could see right through me.

    I spoke to her quietly, almost scared to break the silence, “Hello? Where did everybody go?” My voice echoed through the hallways of the high school like whispers of the dead and I could have sworn I heard other voices respond. The girl simply continued to look through me for a minute before saying, “I am Emma. Welcome to the Mindspace.”

    I took a step back at finally hearing her voice and frowned. “What do you mean ‘the Mindspace?’ Like in my head? Am I going nuts?” Emma cracked a small smile and shook her head before pointing at the front doors of the school and speaking as if to a scared animal, “That is the current exit to the Mindspace. We are in your mind Arkantos. You are like me. You are one of the Angels. We can talk to each other when we are dreaming in the Mindspace. An explosion knocked you unconscious and allowed me to introduce myself into your mind. Eventually, you will meet the rest of our host, but for now, you must wake up. Death is trying to claim you Arkantos.” 

With those final words, she opened the front doors to the school and pushed me through them. I had so many questions I wanted to ask her. What does she mean I’m an angel? Who are the others? What is a Host? How can she be in my mind? But before I could ask any of these things I woke up to find myself on a stretcher out of the school.

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a man in a paramedic’s uniform. Before I could get a word out, I felt myself dropping slightly. As I tried to sit up, the paramedic began shouting in a language I didn’t know. I looked around to see I was no longer at my school. In fact, I wasn’t even in the same neighborhood as my school. I had found myself outside a hospital on a stretcher. 

“What am I doing at a hospital?”, I asked the paramedic in a raspy voice. The sound of my own words surprised me. I didn’t know what language I had spoken, but it wasn’t English.

The man spoke to me in the same language as before. It was familiar, but I didn’t understand anything he was saying. Then, suddenly, I felt a rush in my head and I began to understand what the paramedic was saying. He spoke slowly, “-sion. It destroyed a large part of the school and killed a few students. We still do not know how you survived. 

This hit me hard and it took me a few seconds to understand what he was saying, despite being able to understand his words. People I saw every day were dead. How did I survive the explosion then? When did it hit me? The last thing I remembered before seeing the man in black was an explosion outside of the room. It wasn’t close enough to the room, and I didn’t feel anything hit me. My mind spun with all of these questions, and I had to sit down to handle it. 

A few minutes later, the paramedics led me to a room to be looked over. Once they ensured I did not have anything worse than a few bruises and a mild concussion, I was given a prescription and sent on my way. I stood in the lobby of the hospital for what felt like an eternity before reaching for my phone in my pocket. That was when I noticed my phone was gone.

I turned to the woman at the front desk and asked with a confused expression, “Excuse me, ma’am. Do you know if I was brought in with my phone?” I almost never lost my phone and the call I needed to make was making me tense the longer I had to wait.

She shook her head and sighed. “You’re one of the ones from Johnson High School. It was most likely destroyed in the explosion. You can use that phone on the wall if it is important, but I think your brother would like to speak to you first. He has been sitting in that car out front since you first arrived.”

After a quick glance out the front window of the waiting room, I found Theodore sitting in his old Ford pickup. It was rather easy with the bright red he had decided to paint it last Spring. I stepped outside to find it had grown chilly since I had entered the building. A shiver ran down my spine, and that feeling of being watched washed over me again. 

Walking to that old pickup felt like the longest walk of my life. The entire time, I could feel someone watching me and it made time move like syrup. I was aware of every movement I made, and I noticed everything around me. I could hear the cool Autumn breeze blowing through the dried tree leaves. The scent of the decaying leaves and the pungent smell of the gas in the Ford reached my nose. A chill from the wind blew up my back with the promise of a cold winter. I was acutely aware of everything.

After three painstaking minutes, I reached the Ford and climbed in next to Theodore. He stared at me with a mix of shock and worry. His face went through a range of very different emotions in only two seconds. I sat there, waiting for him to comprehend my being here, with a calm face. The pain of knowing people in the school died hurt and was numbing me worse than any winter cold the weather could bring. 

“How did you survive? I saw you. You were bleeding so much and now you only have a few bruises. How is that possible?” His deep voice cracked and he looked like he had seen a ghost. I simply shrugged because I had no idea. 

That was when the strangest thing happened. Theodore grabbed a strange collar from his side and clamped it around my neck in a single, smooth motion. Before I could speak, he pressed on an earpiece I hadn’t noticed before and said in a proud voice, “Alpha, I have captured a Prime. Could you come get him? I think he may be another Crosser.” I was still frozen in shock when I heard him say this. What was he doing? Why would Theodore put a collar on me and treat me like a criminal? My head spun and I tried to find a way out. This was when I noticed how dampened my senses were compared to when I was coming out of the hospital. 

I noticed Theodore checking his phone hurriedly and chose that moment to make my escape. Whoever this was, it clearly wasn’t my brother. That thought helped me feel better after I swung at him and punched him as hard as I could in his right eye. Suddenly, I felt a spark on my neck and was plunged into darkness.

When I woke up, I was on a pier at night. I found myself standing between two people, cloaked by darkness, with guns aimed at each other. A moment later they stepped forward into the light. The sight before me was shocking to say the least. Theodore stood to my right with his gun aimed at, what seemed like, a copy of me to the left. I tried to speak but found my voice was gone. As I was distracted by trying to get words out of my mouth, I heard a loud bang. I looked up and saw both myself and Theodore on the ground with bullet holes in their chests and smoking guns. I finally found my voice when a scream escaped my throat. The world faded back to black with the last image in my mind being myself and my brother dead by each other’s hands. Only my screams and the sounds of those echoing gunshots filled the void that engulfed me.

A/N Hello again! I'm sorry this chapter was everywhere, but you'll understand why next chapter.